Disney Creates Low Cost Solution for Blind to ‘Feel Fireworks

Imagine feeling the dazzling Disney fireworks display — when you cannot see them.

Disney Research is working on a way to share the fireworks experience with the blind and visually-impaired.

The system uses water jets that spray onto a screen, which are synced up with the show in the sky.

Feeling Fireworks is aimed at making fireworks more inclusive

for blind and visually impaired users, in a novel experience that can be shared by all. Tactile effects are created using directable water jets that spray onto the rear of a flexible screen, with different nozzles for different firework effects.

It is low-cost and allows for dynamic tactile effects to be rendered with high spatial resolution. A user study demonstrated that the tactile effects are meaningful analogs to the visual fireworks that they represent, with sighted users able to label the correct correspondence of tactile-to-visual effects by a large margin over chance. Beyond the specific application, the technology represents a novel and cost-effective approach for making large scalable tactile displays, with the potential for wider use.

About Nelson Régo

Nelson Régo is the owner and founder of the Cool Blind Tech website since November of 2012. Nelson launched the first show on March 14, 2013. He also directs the website as a whole, hiring staff, originating new shows, and approving all content.

Normally we would suggest people to make a comment on the video, but in this case the producers of the video have disabled comments. Despite the oversight of the producers of the video we find overall the videos complement the articles, if we find an audio described version of this video we will gladly replace it.

In this episode, James Oates demonstrates LookTel Money Reader on an iPhone5 running iOS8.1.2.
LookTel Money Reader instantly recognizes currency and speaks the denomination, enabling people experiencing visual impairments or blindness to quickly and easily identify and count bills. Point the camera of your iOS device at a bill and the application will tell you the denomination in real-time. Twenty one currencies are supported: the US Dollar, Australian Dollar, Bahraini Dinar, Brazilian Real, Belarusian Ruble, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Euro, Hungarian Forint, Israeli Shekel, Indian Rupee, Japanese Yen, Kuwaiti Dinar, Mexican Peso, New Zealand Dollar, Polish Zloty, Russian Ruble, Saudi Arabian Riyal, Singapore Dollar, and United Arab Emirates Dirham.